A few months ago, we had some friends in from New York City and, as is our custom with visitors, we took them up to spend the day in Point Reyes. It was a lovely winter day, clear skies, almost windless, just cold enough to keep away masses of fun seekers.

We stopped, as is also our custom, at Tomales Bay Foods to pick up some lunch. I have a somewhat mixed reaction to the Bay Area food cathedrals, Chez Panisse and Berkeley Bowl and the rest. I'm always really glad they're there, and I gladly eat the food they provide me, but they do seem a little too self-satisfied and precious. Those of us who live in the Bay Area leftie bubble can get overdosed pretty quickly on humorless high-mindedness.

Not that high-mindedness is bad. It's better, for instance, than low-mindedness. But still ... I was at a dinner party about six months ago. Everyone there was a food person. Everyone there wanted to talk about what everything tasted like. Opinions were offered. I thought it was all good, and I really didn't have opinions, and anyway I really didn't want to talk about food, or anyway the food I was currently eating. Tell me about hog farming; I'm interested in hog farming. Don't tell me about the mango chutney next to my pork chop and how it compares with other mango chutneys.

But I don't say that, because it seems ungrateful. Thank you for the nice chutney, and I'll think about yard work now, and you won't notice a thing.

So I think I was seeing Tomales Bay Foods through my friends' eyes, and assuming that somehow tough urban East Coast people would react even more strongly to the feyness quotient than I do. "It's really good," I said, "but it's all a little much, you know, the organic this and the artisanal that and -- "

One of them interrupted me. "Isn't this how we all should live?" he asked. "Isn't this the very best way possible to handle food and the land? If more people did this and we had economies of scale, wouldn't everything be a lot better?"

"Well, yeah, of course -- "

"Look at this cheese!" he said, and then he was off asking for tastes and making informed selections and getting happier and having a day well spent, as he said later. We went out to Limantour and sat in the sand, and we walked up the beach looking for seals (no seals, but oh those pelicans) and stayed until almost sunset, sometimes talking and sometimes not.

I've been told so many times that my Bay Area boosterism is narcissistic and provincial; I tend to believe it, even if I can't stop myself from experiencing the emotions. I try to, in situations requiring sophistication, distance myself a little from the place. "Oh yes, we're a little twee and granola ha ha" -- although, you know, what's the matter with granola? Granola made with even a modicum of care is good. Good tomatoes are better, and I live in the world center of the Better Tomato Sweepstakes. But my, I don't want to be provincial. I'm sure all provincials feel the same way.

On the other hand, here comes this guy from New York (he even works at a magazine), and he thinks this could very well be heaven. Of course, if everyone from New York moved to Point Reyes, it would stop being heaven very quickly, but that's not going to happen. Some of them may go there, as Prince Charles did, and get all enthusiastic and go back and do something useful wherever they are. These covert organic operatives will be improving the world, and who should get the credit? Cowgirl Creamery. Some people say it was Al Gore's movie, but really: Cowgirl Creamery.

I can get giddy about this stuff. I've been reading "The Omnivore's Dilemma" by Michael Pollan, who lives of course in the Bay Area, and he says America is mostly eating corn and petroleum packaged in various colorful ways, and there does not seem to be any way of stopping this trend until the oil runs out. We can eat our tomatoes and cheese produced by fine people who live within a 100-mile radius of Walnut Creek, but that's not going to help Iowa, and Iowa could use some help.

I live with the suspicion that all this careful agriculture is just a more eco-friendly way of rearranging the ottomans on the Hindenburg, and that we're all doomed, but at least we're doomed with balsamic vinegar and fresh lettuce picked that morning by a nice man who has a windmill.

Of course you can get sand in your salad, it happens and it's not fun, but every